A look back at Gwulo's 2025

Highlights of the year included starting with a mention in the New Year's Honours List, and ending with the website passing 60,000 pages for the first time.

Gwulo's books also reached new milestones, with total sales of the English copies passing 9,000 copies, and publication of the Chinese translation of Volume 1.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible,

David

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In more detail...

1. New Year's Honour

Here's that mention in the New Year's Honours List:

THE KING has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the British Empire Medal (Civil Division) to the undermentioned: B.E.M. David Richard BELLIS Founder, Gwulo For services to Heritage Preservation in Hong Kong.

The B.E.M. ceremony happens at the county level, which meant a trip to Pembrokeshire's County Hall. The Lord Lieutenant, the High Sheriff, and all the team at Pembrokeshire County Council gave us a warm welcome, and several local Cadets attended, looking very smart in their uniforms. My family from Hong Kong and the UK were able to join us too, which all made it a very special day for me.

Receiving the B.E.M. also meant we were invited to attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace, which was a real treat.

 

2. The Gwulo website

The website continues to grow, ending the year with 60,512 pages, including 40,094 photos. Here are the new pages in 2025 that had the most views:

1	A New Year's Honour
2	Cheung Chau Assembly Hall [c.1924-c.1941]
3	Video: 1960 Hong Kong in colour slides
4	Video: The day the fountain played
5	Richard “Dick” HUGHES C.B.E. (aka "The Cardinal") [1906-1984]
6	Video: An unusual rickshaw on 19th-century Pottinger Street
7	Video: Convert handwritten / typed / printed pages into text for free with AI
8	Mum's Diaries
9	Two schools started on School Road locale c.1920s ? And years later ...
10	Video: Three Vintage Photos from 1902 Reveal Hong Kong's Hidden History

 

3. Contributors

Thank you to everyone who added to the site in 2025, and a round of applause for the most prolific contributors:

Rank	Name	Pages	Photos	Comments	Total
1	moddsey	80	145	237	462
2	Aldi	94	202	117	413
3	Admin	149	63	199	411
4	Klaus	37	203	92	332
5	tngan	15	223	40	278
6	eurasian_david	27	37	117	181
7	aagg		158	18	176
8	GinoRocksen Wong	4	108	50	162
9	philk	24	56	64	144
10	HCIIL		120		120
		Show all	Show all	Show all

4. Patrons

The costs of running the Gwulo website are supported by Gwulo's patrons. Patrons make a regular contribution, typically around £3-5 / HK$30-50 a month.

Thank you to the 43 patrons who generously supported Gwulo in 2025.

(If you'd like to become a patron, you can find details on Gwulo's Patreon page.)
 

5. Online readers

Working out how many people read what we write is not an exact science. In previous years I've used 'page views', which counts how many times anyone has viewed a page on the Gwulo website. The initial result from Google Analytics says there were just over 3 million page views in 2025.

But ... a quick glance at the numbers for individual pages shows a problem: many pages were 'viewed' for less than a second, suggesting the viewer was a machine instead of a person, e.g. a computer collecting content for A.I. processing. After removing all the pages viewed for less than 5 seconds, we get 1.8 million page views.

Another figure I've used to gauge interest over the years is the number of people subscribed to Gwulo's newsletter. At the end of 2025, there were 5,593 people subscribed to this newsletter, a steady increase over previous years.

I'll also put the numbers of subscribers for other social media below, but I'm not sure they add much value. e.g. you'll see the number of people that follow Gwulo's Facebook page has increased to 10,000, but if I add a new post to Facebook it is only shown to around 1-3,000 of them. Facebook now wants me to pay to 'boost' the post if I want to reach all of Gwulo's followers.
 

6. Books

In July, publisher 非凡出版 launched their Chinese translation of my first book, 老照港古:香江華洋舊事相中尋, at the Hong Kong Book Fair. I have to wait for the first anniversary of the launch to get the numbers for how well it has sold. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!

Back with the original English books, we ended the year with over 9,100 copies sold since the initial launch in 2017. Thank you to everyone who bought a copy in 2025, and also thanks to Bookazine and Blacksmith Books for their help with selling.
 

7. Talks

It might be tricky to work out how many people view a web page, but it's easy to see how many people attend a talk!

During the year I showed Gwulo's photos and told their stories at talks in London, Cheltenham, Glasgow, and Exeter, and also to a couple of local groups here in Pembrokeshire. Thank you to everyone who attended, and to the Friends of East Asia and Martin Reynolds for handling the arrangements for the London and Cheltenham talks, respectively.

Looking ahead, I'm booked to give a new talk in London on 25th April 2026, details to follow.

If you have a group of people with an interest in Hong Kong that would enjoy Gwulo's photos & stories, please get in touch so we can work out the arrangements for a talk.

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2025 in numbers

Pageviews on the Gwulo website:

	2025	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Pageviews (thousands)	1,807	1,753	1,912	2,552	2,640	2,077	1,996	1,647	1,292	1,184	1,186	1,351	1,149	919	872

 

Subscribers / Followers:

	2025	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Newsletter	5,593	5,229	4,853	4,695	3,939	3,240	2,737	2,067	1,466	1,211	1,030	833	603	353	180
Wartime Diaries [1]	1,072	975	870	833	780	733	665	667	557	438	327	241	118
Facebook	10,000	7,700	6,500	6,100	5,043	3,487	3,060	2,344	1,849	1,629	965	705	463	273
Pinterest	3,372	3,280	3,100
Instagram	2,773	1,133	871

Notes:
[1]. Some people subscribe to more than one year's Wartime Diaries, so the total number of individuals subscribing will be lower than the value shown here.

 

Website content:

	2025	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Photos	40,094	37,726	35,614	31,983	29,803	27,477	23,305	19,870	17,740	15,508	11,670	9,401	7,817	6,359	5,725	4,330
Places	6,957	6,710	6,514	6,141	5,901	5,628	5,029	4,570	4,290	3,770	3,140	2,867	2,440	2,035	1,623	1,310
Diary pages	5,578	5,421	5,399	5,393	5,258	5,051	4,973	4,690	4,630	4,373	3,836	3,243	2,326	1,589
People	4,654	4,458	4,011	3,813	3,661	3,458	3,281	3,120	2,900	2,696	2,425	1,907	1,522	1,000	28
Forum topics	2,480	2,338	2,248	2,134	2,014	1,853	1,621	1,460	1,310	1,159	1,019	923	761	639	525	350
Stories	635	621	603	577	564	548	505	480	430	405	341	312	265	243	213	170
Streets	62	59	50	50	44	37	20
Events	52	46	41
Total pages	60,512	57,379	54,480	50,091	47,245	44,052	38,734	34,190	31,300	27,911	22,431	18,653	15,131	11,865	8,114	6,160
Total comments	64,369	61,092	57,963	54,007	53,689	49,580	43,690	38,840	35,320	31,861	27,620	24,097	20,883	17,477	14,910	11,370
Jurors Lists (years)	95	81	68	62	58	55	48	43	38	35	33	31	29	27	19	11